Molecular and Immunohistochemical Analysis of Kaposi’s Sarcoma Patients

Abstract

<strong>Introduction:</strong> Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) is a neoplasm involving blood and lymphatic vessels that has been characterized in four different clinical and epidemiological forms (classic, endemic, iatrogenic and epidemic). KS incidence is reported low in the general population of Iran while it is reported high among Iranian renal transplant recipients.<br /> <br /> <strong>Objective:</strong> There are only some studies regarding the epidemiological and clinical features of KS in Iranian renal transplant recipients, but no reports are available on classic KS.<br /> <br /> <strong><strong>Materials and Methods</strong>:</strong> Present study intended to assess retrospectively the demographic and clinical features of 44 KS patients referred to the Razi Hospital in Tehran from 2000 to 2009. It also intended to detect human herpesvirus 8 to confirm the KS histological diagnosis.<br /> <br /> <strong>Results</strong><strong>:</strong> In these series of patients, 77.3% were male and 22.7% were female. There was a male predominance with a ratio of 3.4/1. Classic, epidemic and iatrogenic KS are found in 40 (90.9%), 2 (4.55%) and 2 (4.55%) of patients, respectively. The mean age was 62.87 among 40 patients with classic KS. In most cases (93.2%), KS was limited to the skin, without mucosal, lymph node or visceral manifestations. KS lesions mainly localized to the skin of extremities, particularly lower extremities. HHV-8 antigen and genome was detected in all samples.<br /> <br /> <strong>Conclusion:</strong> This study showed that the picture of KS is similar to previous reports in our region. Also, our results confirmed the pathological diagnosis of KS cases in our study group.